Jesus
and his disciples set out for the villages of Caesarea Philippi. Along the
way he asked his disciples, "Who do people say that I am?" They said in
reply, "John the Baptist, others Elijah, still others one of the prophets."
And he asked them. "But who do you say that I am?" Peter said to him
in reply, "You are the Christ." Then he warned them not to tell anyone
about him.

He
began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by
the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and rise after
three days. He spoke this openly. Then Peter took him aside and
began to rebuke him. At this he turned around and, looking at his
disciples, rebuked Peter and said, "Get behind me, Satan. You are thinking
not as God does, but as human beings do."

He
summoned the crowd with his disciples and said to them, "Whoever wishes to come
after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever
wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and
that of the gospel will save it."

In
this Sunday’s Gospel reading, two crosses loom before our eyes: the cross of
Christ and our own cross.

In
the first part of the Gospel, Jesus speaks about His coming suffering and
crucifixion. It seemed scandalous to Peter who, as most people in those days,
saw suffering as only a curse and without redeeming value. But, we know the rest
of the story. From Jesus’ Crucifixion came His Resurrection, redemption and
renewal. Some of the most majestic Christian hymns over the centuries have been
about the Crucifixion of Christ. Today, we raise the crucifix high in our
churches because we see it as the place of Christ’s great victory over sin,
death and human treachery. Some churches conclude the Stations of the Cross with
a fifteenth station of the Resurrection so that we don’t divorce Christ’s death
from His Resurrection. To do so can be spiritually lethal. Cross and
Resurrection go together for the Christian disciple.

The
challenge to us from today’s Gospel is not the cross of Christ as it was for
Peter but the second cross about which Jesus speaks. That is the cross we carry
in our own life. Everybody has a cross. Life without a cross is a fantasy. Our
cross may be medical, financial, emotional, familial, work-related; it may be
our neighbor, our spouse or our memories. We do not see the outcome of our cross
as clearly as we see the outcome of Christ’s cross.

The
particular cross we carry, however, opens our eyes to some critical truths.

The
first is that the cross is what unites us. The poet Virgil has a line in his
epic poem, “The Aeneid,” where the protagonist Aeneas sees images of war drawn
on a wall. It brings back memories of what he had actually experienced. Virgil
then states, (“Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt.” “There are tears
at the heart of our world, and men’s hearts are moved by what people have to
bear.”) Our individual crosses may differ but we all have a burden to bear. That
is the common thread of our humanity. We all have a cross whether it is public
or private.

The
second insight for us from the cross is that the cross we carry is our
distinctively individual and personal way of following the Lord. Jesus tells us
to pick up our cross daily and to follow Him. It does little good to deny our
cross, to resist it, to curse it, to refuse to deal with it. It is there as a
fact of our life. All we can do is carry it. We can carry it grudgingly or as a
disciple.

The
third lesson of the cross for us is that the cross of Christ gives us hope. It
is not hope that it will go away but that God will bring good from it in a way
we can barely imagine. Through our cross, we will enter the world of deep
discipleship; we will enter the path of faithful following of Jesus. It is the
place where we will connect most deeply with the Lord.

When
we boldly carry our cross, trusting in the Father’s love, that is when we can
become most like Jesus. So, we have the tale of two crosses — Christ’s and our
own. We know where the cross of Jesus leads. What about our own?